different Colonies, as slave labor was found more or less profitable. But no one seems to have
doubted the correctness of the prevailing opinion of the time.

The legislation of the different Colonies furnishes positive and indisputable proof of this
fact.

It would be tedious, in this opinion, to enumerate the various laws they passed upon this
subject. It will be sufficient, as a sample of the legislation which then generally prevailed
throughout the British Colonies, to give the laws of two of them; one being still a large
slaveholding State, and the other the first State in which slavery ceased to exist.

The Province of Maryland, in 1717 (ch. 13, sec. 5), passed a law declaring "that if any
free negro or mulatto intermarry with any white woman, or if any white man shall intermarry
with any negro or mulatto woman, such negro or mulatto shall become a slave during life,
excepting mulattoes born of white women, who, for such intermarriage, shall only become
servants for seven years, to be disposed of as the Justices of the County Court, where such
marriage so happens, shall think fit; to be applied by them towards the support of a public school
within the said county. And any white man or white woman who shall intermarry as aforesaid,
with any negro or mulatto, such white man or white woman shall become servants during the
term of seven years, and shall be disposed of by the justices as aforesaid, and be applied to the
uses aforesaid."

The other colonial law to which we refer was passed by Massachusetts in 1705 (chap. 6).
It is entitled "An Act for the better preventing of a spurious and mixed issue," etc.; and it
provides, that "if any negro or mulatto shall presume to smite or strike any person of the English
or other Christian nation, such negro or mulatto shall be severely whipped, at the discretion of
the justices before whom the offender shall be convicted."

And "that none of Her Majesty's English or Scottish subjects, nor of any other Christian
nation, within this province, shall contract matrimony with any negro or mulatto; nor shall any
person, duly authorized to solemnize marriage, presume to join any such in marriage, on pain of
forfeiting the sum of fifty pounds; one moiety thereof to Her Majesty, for and towards the
support of the government within this province, and the other moiety to him or them that shall
inform and sue for the same in any of Her Majesty's courts of record within the Province, by will,
plaint, or information."

We give both of these laws in the words used by the respective legislative bodies, because
the language in which they are framed, as well as the provisions contained in them, show, too
plainly to be misunderstood, the degraded condition of this unhappy race. They were still in
force when the Revolution began, and are a faithful index to the state of feeling towards the class
of persons of whom they speak, and of the position they occupied throughout the thirteen
colonies, in the eyes and thoughts of the men who framed the Declaration of Independence and
established the State constitutions and governments. They show that a perpetual and impassable

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